F1 News

Bernie Ecclestone, in an interview on Bosnian television, has announced that he is trying to get F1 to adopt a ‘gold medal’ system in place of the current method of allocating points to the top eight race-finishers.

Speaking on HRT2, the F1 supremo said that he had spoken to FIA President Max Mosley about introducing the system, in an attempt to encourage drivers to overtake more.

Bernie admitted that F1 lacks overtaking today, but went on to say that it has always been this way, citing the fact that drivers lack the ‘incentive’ to overtake. The gold medal system, in which the championship is decided on the number of race wins (gold medals), regardless of where the drivers have finished in other races, is designed to change that.

Ecclestone’s view that F1 drivers lack the incentive to go for race wins goes against recent comments by Lewis Hamilton, who said that F1 is boring because drivers cannot get close enough to overtake.

It also questions the logic behind changes made to the F1 point system as recently as 2003, when the difference between first and second place was cut from four points to just two, making going for that race win even less worthwhile.

When the interviewer remarked that he had never heard Bernie speak about this ‘gold medal’ system, Mr Ecclestone replied that he had not spoken to the press before about the proposal.

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